Starving To Be Perfect
by DarkandtwistyGirl
Summary: Set post S7. Meredith had always been slim, but no one knew the half of it. When it all gets to be too much and feelings long since buried come back to the surface, can her friends save her, or will Meredith lose her life to anorexia? *Complete*
1. Chapter 1

_**Disclaimer: I own nothing that has anything to do with Grey's Anatomy or the characters, unless you count the DVDs. This is just for fun.**_

_**Enjoy!**_

* * *

**Chapter 1**

Meredith Grey was finally starting to get her life together, to get the life she wanted, she and Derek were living together, their house on Derek's land was under construction, due to be finished in six months, her surgical career was on track, with her having been given a position at Seattle Grace after she finished her residency the year before as an attending, specializing in neuro.

She was even on good terms with her half sister, Lexie Grey.

But one day everything started to crumble.

It should have been a happy day, Derek proposed to Meredith. He wanted her to have a real wedding, the works, not just a post-it. But for Meredith it was anything but, she was in hell.

All she could think about when she heard marriage was the wedding, the reception, all that food, everything high in calories, far, dripping in fat, full of sugar, she wouldn't be able to avoid it all.

There's something about Meredith Grey that not even her closest friends knew. When she was a teenager, she had suffered severely from anorexia nervosa, at sixteen it was at its worst.

* * *

They were living in Boston, her mother was never home. Meredith hated her life, she wanted to be dead, and she came very close to succeeding, though in her mind she failed, she never attained perfection, she got caught before she could get there.

One of her teachers noticed that she had lost weight, too much weight, she was looking pale and sickly, and was on the verge of collapse from dehydration, but still it was her teacher, not her mother that recognized the problem.

Ellis Grey's idea of caring for her daughter once the teacher informed her of what she had noticed, was to ship Meredith off to a treatment centre over six hours from their home, Renfrew Centre in Florida.

Meredith stayed there for five months, five months in which her mother never came to see her.

* * *

That was years ago and Meredith had considered it ancient history, but the stress of her residency, people watching her every move, criticizing her, had brought back all the old feelings, disgust, self hatred, shame, envy.

And as those feelings came back so too did the behaviors, starving herself, binging, purging, spending every free minute exercising to get rid of the few calories she'd eaten.

The idea that people could eat more than fifty calories a day was beyond Meredith's comprehension. Her mind was once again consumed by the disordered thoughts, and as the thoughts got stronger, took more control of her, she spent less and less time with friends.

Instead she opted to spend her time exercising.

* * *

Derek waited apprehensively for Meredith's response, he was down on one knee, the ring held in his outstretched hand. They were on the catwalk, and everyone's eyes were on them.

Meredith couldn't handle it, she couldn't cope, so she ran.

Literally, she ran ten blocks, before she collapsed onto a park bench. Her breath was coming in gasps, she felt cold, and on the verge of being sick.

But in her mind that was good, it meant that she had avoided all calories so far that day, she was beating herself up over a glass of water, but that was all.

Even as she threw up all over the pavement, Meredith didn't see the problem, all she could think of was the proposal and everything it would lead to, it was too much.

* * *

Stories of Derek's failed proposal and Meredith's freak out filled the hospital, it didn't take long for them to reach her friends. Half an hour later, Christina found Meredith sitting on the bench, a pool of vomit at her feet.

Christina nearly gasped at the sight of her friend, Meredith was severely dehydrated, and slumped backwards against the bench.

"Meredith!"

Christina pulled out her phone, as she rushed to her friend, calling an ambulance. She felt for a pulse, it was weak, too weak, her breathing was shallow at best, and she looked almost grey.

Of course Christina, and Meredith's fellow residents had noticed her recent weight loss, and they had tried to get her to seek help, only to be shot down, and now they were going to pay the price.

Christina knew that Meredith was in bad shape, and the ambulance was at least twenty minutes away, twenty minutes that Meredith may not have.

Christina lay Meredith down on the bench as she dialed another number, Alex, who had a car, and Christina knew would get there in a couple of minutes.

* * *

Together Alex and Christina got Meredith to the hospital, where everyone was gathered, waiting for Meredith to arrive, a gurney waiting ready for her. Despite Derek's position as chief of staff, Mark and Bailey overruled him, knowing that he wouldn't be able to remain composed and able to think straight, when it was Meredith on the bed.

Alex carried Meredith through the doors, and laid her on the gurney as Christina reported to Bailey, who was standing at the ready, "She's severely dehydrated, resps are at ten per minute and shallow, pulse's seventy-five but weak. She needs fluids and oxygen support."

With Meredith lying on the gurney, unconscious, it was clear to everyone, looking at her body that she was much too thin, her bones jutted out against her dusky skin, she was just skin and bones.

* * *

Two bags of IV saline later, Meredith regained consciousness, and Bailey was there waiting.

"What in god's name were you thinking, Grey?! You nearly died! I know what you were thinking, nothing, you were thinking nothing, because I know I taught you better than to damn near starve yourself to death!"

Meredith ignored her mentor yelling at her, all she could think of was the feeling of the saline running into her veins, making her fat.

She made a grab for the IV line in her hand, only to be abruptly stopped by a tug on her wrist. She looked to Bailey furiously, and screamed at her, "YOU RESTRAINED ME!?! LET ME FUCKING GO! I DON'T NEED TO BE HERE! LET ME GO YOU STUPID BITCH!!"

Meredith's outburst hurt Miranda Bailey more than she would let herself show, she knew that it wasn't Meredith speaking, it was her disordered thoughts that were making her act irrationally.

"You passed out on a park bench, Christina found you, you were severely dehydrated. You are lucky that she found you when she did."

Meredith just kept screaming.

"We're putting you on a seventy-two hour hold, Meredith. I'm sorry."

**

* * *

**_**TBC...**_


	2. Chapter 2

_**Disclaimer: I own nothing that has anything to do with Grey's Anatomy or the characters, unless you count the DVDs. This is just for fun.**_

_**Enjoy!**_

* * *

**Chapter 2**

Through the drama, Mark held Derek hostage in his office, keeping him out of the way of the staff, it bore too much resemblance to Meredith's near drowning for their comfort.

"Let me go down there, Mark. I can help."

"Bailey's got it, you'll just get in the way, and you're in no shape to work. So just sit and wait."

Derek picked up the phone receiver for the fifth time since Meredith had been brought in. "I'm calling again."

"I'm not stopping you."

* * *

Finally, after her confrontation with Meredith, Miranda headed upstairs to Derek's office, she refused to say anything to him until he was seated, and had stopped shouting at her to tell him about his girlfriend's condition.

"She's medically stable, though severely malnourished and when she came in dehydrated. They're moving her upstairs to psych."

"Psych?! What are you talking about, Miranda?" Derek's temper flared.

"The psychiatrist will confirm it, but Derek…" Bailey paused, "Meredith's medical records indicate that she was treated for anorexia when she was sixteen, and it looks like it is back."

Derek sat in silence for quite some time, trying to process things. "But she's, she's a doctor, she's smart, there's no way she would have let this happen."

"I don't know what to stay Dr Shepherd, you know as well as I do, it has nothing to do with how smart someone is, remember psych rotation?, they taught us back then that it was actually more often very smart, very accomplished people who get anorexia."

Derek paused again, before he finally he asked Bailey, "Can I see her?"

"I'll take you up there, but Derek, she is very emotionally fragile, and she isn't thinking clearly. Don't say I didn't warn you."

* * *

Derek was unsettled by Miranda's warning, what had she meant? He didn't realize what she had meant until he stepped off the elevator on the fifth floor, Derek could hear Meredith screaming from the moment the doors opened.

Mark placed a steadying hand on his friend's elbow as they headed to Meredith's room.

Meredith was tied to the bed by restraints on her wrists and ankles, the blankets had been flung off the bed, and all that covered Meredith's emaciated frame was a thin light purple hospital gown.

"Oh Mere," Derek murmured in shock as he saw his girlfriend, and the reality finally dawned on him just how unwell she was.

He had been in denial about it, as a doctor he had known that something was seriously wrong, but as her partner he struggled to see her as anything other than the woman he'd met her at Joe's Bar six years ago.

But there was no denying it now, his wife was starving to death.

Meredith didn't even notice Derek enter the room as she kicked out and screamed, demanding to be let go, threatening, and so on.

It broke Derek's heart.

* * *

The next day after the psychiatrist had seen Meredith, as well as a number of doctors from different specialties, mainly cardiology and dietetics, the nurses were given an order to place a nasogastric feeding tube and start the replacement nutrition.

Meredith wasn't happy, it had taken Derek hours to calm her down, and as soon as she heard their plans she went off again.

Meredith had already pulled out two IVs to avoid receiving fluids, it only stood to reason that she wasn't going to like this, she would remember it as one of the most traumatic experiences of her adult life.

The psychiatric team had seen it all before, they just had to put her back in restraints to stop her from pulling out the tube, and just get it done.

* * *

No one other than Derek could get in to see Meredith, except for Lexie, and she was in no hurry to see her half sister struggling.

* * *

It was no picnic for Meredith either mind you, they had taken complete control of her life, in her mind they were killing her, painfully torturing her. She crawled into herself, her friends thought it was good, she had calmed down, Derek thought it was good, they had no idea.

Meredith didn't speak to anyone, she only got out of bed to exercise, to frantically attempt to burn off the calories they were putting into her body, in the twenty-five minute windows of time between room checks, a technique used by the nurses to supposedly stop exactly what she was doing, she wouldn't speak to the psychiatrist they made her see every few days, and she certainly, no matter how bad she felt, would not show her emotions.

* * *

Meredith remained in the Seattle Grace psych unit for two months, before Derek finally realized that it wasn't working, while Meredith was putting weight on, she still wouldn't touch so much as a lettuce leaf, and you had no chance of having a rational conversation with her.

Derek hated seeing her like this, and he couldn't take watching her flailing in the psychiatric unit, he couldn't just sit back, the doctor treating her wasn't doing squat, all the doctor cared was that Meredith's weight was increasing, it didn't matter to the doctor that Meredith was on the verge of full blown psychosis.

That in mind, Derek spent three days straight looking into private facilities, and after looking at nearly a dozen units around the country, he decided on one close to home, Timbertop Treatment and Recovery Centre in Jefferson County in Washington. They came with an exceptional recommendation, but that meant nothing to Meredith when Derek told her.

Meredith was out of her mind, starved of nutrients, her body wasted away, Meredith couldn't see past her severely disordered thoughts, she had retreated entirely into the anorexia, and everything that came with the disorder, there was nothing that mattered to her, not her friends, not her attending position or the responsibilities that came with it, responsibilities that Derek had been forced to take over in addition to his regular duties as chief of surgery, not even Derek mattered to her, all she cared about, well even she didn't quite know what she cared about, it was more that all she could think about was food, how much fat she saw hanging grotesquely from her body, and how she was going to get rid of the nonexistent fat.

Derek hadn't spoken much to anyone in regards to Meredith's condition, except for his best friend, his confidant Mark Sloan, he couldn't it was too hard, he still struggled to believe that he hadn't seen how unwell Meredith, his wife had become until she collapsed because her body simply couldn't take any more.

But he felt that as he was signing Meredith out tomorrow morning, and taking her to the treatment centre, he should speak with everyone.

Derek had his assistant, Virginia page everyone to his office, Bailey, Lexie, Christina, Alex, and Izzie, and to say that the air had been tense when he had walked in was an understatement.

They all pounced on him, after hearing next to nothing for weeks, being paged to Derek's office had them all on edge, worried that he had bad news to give them, they were relieved to hear that Derek had realised what they had a few weeks into Meredith's admission, it wasn't working, and that she would be moved to somewhere where she would recover.

It was the most hope they'd had since before this whole thing started.

* * *

_**TBC...**_


	3. Chapter 3

_**Disclaimer: I own nothing that has anything to do with Grey's Anatomy or the characters, unless you count the DVDs. This is just for fun.**_

_**Enjoy!**_

* * *

**Chapter 3**

But their hope quickly dissipated, if anything Meredith deteriorated after entering the centre. Inside knowledge of eating disorder treatment programs is that the girls you meet in there, either they want to get better or they don't, and if they don't, there are many ways that they use to evade following the prescribed programs, ways that most people wouldn't even contemplate, and they would be more than happy to help out the next girl that came in who felt the same. Meredith had done the whole 'recovery' thing when she was sixteen, in her mind she now believed that what they had taught her was crap, that they had only been doing it to make her fat and unhappy, being thin, it felt as though she was walking on air, she couldn't get fat again, she wouldn't let that happen, and on her fourth day in the centre, she found the help that she wanted. Help came in the form of nineteen year old, Casey.

* * *

The centre had a very structured routine, seemingly impossible to find ways to keep up the behaviours that the centre attempted to treat, but if anything having that rigid schedule made it all the easier to manipulate it.

A printed timetable was given to patients on the Monday morning, it was the same every week, only the topic of the groups changed, and even that was on a six week rotation.

The printed schedule read,

7:30 am – Wake up

7:40 am – Weigh in – Monday, Wednesday, Friday

8:00 am – Breakfast

8:30 am – Supervision

9:30 am – Free time

10:00 am – Morning tea

10:15 am – Supervision

10:30 am – Group

11:45 am – Free time

12:00 pm – Lunch

12:30 pm – Supervision

1:30 pm – Free time

1:45 pm – Group

2:45 pm – Free time

3:00 pm – Afternoon tea

3:15 pm – Supervision

3:30 pm – Group

4:30 pm – Free time

5:20 pm – Dinner

5:50 pm – Supervision

6:50 pm – Free time

8:30 pm – Supper

8:45 pm – Supervision

9:05 pm – Free time

Every activity followed the last, supposedly the patients weren't much let out of the staffs' site through the day, even during 'free time' they were not permitted to leave the unit, they could only leave when they were allowed leave on the weekends, even at night they were checked on every half hour. 'Supervision' was a time after each meal where the patients would need to remain in the group room, seated, not attempting to burn off, or expel the food they had just eaten.

Seemingly there was no way around it, but where there's a will...

Meredith would neatly trim the piece of A5 paper to fit into her diary, and beside 'their timetable', she would write her own of sorts, she and Casey would.

Meredith would write out each and every detail of her disordered acts, to set them in her mind, it detailed her vigorous late night/early morning, her highly thought out methods to avoid actually eating and/or purge food after meals without suspicion, her tactics for beating the weight checks, weighted gowns, ankle weights being tied together around her too thin waist, everything she could do to make it seem as though she was steadily gaining weight, though she was actually still dropping weight, she had by this point worked her way down to a skeletal 87 pounds.

It might seem absurd, but to Meredith, this was _the_ most important part of her life, she had to have her routine, and she absolutely had to follow it.

She was killing herself.

* * *

All the while as Meredith allowed herself to slip further into the disorder, as she was technically and as far as the nurses could see, following the program, it appeared that she was gaining weight, Derek believed that she was getting better, he believed that his wife would be coming home.

But he was wrong.

* * *

Derek went to the centre at lunch time one day, to share a meal with his wife. As far as the staff at the centre knew, Meredith was completely compliant with their program, so they had no problem with Meredith having an unsupervised meal.

The centre's staff had full control over what was placed on the patients' meal trays, the only choice they had was meat or vegetarian, so Meredith had her meal set out by the staff at a small table, Derek had gotten the same meal as he was advised to by the staff to help Meredith feel comfortable, or at least that was their theory.

Derek sat opposite Meredith as they ate, and that was when he got the only clue he was likely to get that Meredith was still very unwell, he reached over to give her arm a gentle squeeze as he offered her an encouraging smile, and said, "I love you, Mere. I'm so proud of you," but as he touched her loose sleeve covered arm, he felt something unusual, warm and squishy, it felt like food. "Meredith?" Derek said questioningly, his tone changed in an instant.

Meredith clammed up, but just as quickly she smoothly excused herself to go to the bathroom, which wasn't allowed by the centre, but Derek didn't know that.

* * *

By the time Meredith returned she had disposed of the food, which had been going into a plastic bag she had secured to the hem of her sleeve, there was no evidence of her crime so to speak, and she, a master at deception easily talked Derek out of thinking what he had been.

That was the last time Derek would see Meredith alive.

* * *

The things that Meredith was doing to her body, the things that the disorder forced her to do, vomiting often multiple times every day, starving her body, abusing laxatives and ipecac, it did a lot of damage, too much damage. A known risk of eating disorders is sudden cardiac death, a fatal heart attack when their hearts simply can't take any more.

* * *

They found Meredith in her bed during a routine room check just after four am.

Of course the staff had done all they could to save her, but her heart had been too damaged.

* * *

_**TBC...**_


	4. Chapter 4

_**Disclaimer: I own nothing that has anything to do with Grey's Anatomy or the characters, unless you count the DVDs. This is just for fun.**_

_**Hi everyone! As this is the last chapter, I just wanted to ask, please can you let me know what you thought of this story! **_

_**Thanks,**_

_**Enjoy!**_

* * *

**Chapter 4**

When Derek arrived at the centre, he was met by one of the unit nurses, Allison. All they had told him over the phone was that there was a problem, they wouldn't give him any more information, but the hour in which they had called and the expression on Allison's face told him why.

Allison guided Derek over to a small seating area, and as they sat opposite each other on the brightly coloured, overstuffed lounge chairs, a stark contrast to the dimmed foyer, Allison broke the news to him, "I'm very sorry, we used all of our resources, but we couldn't resuscitate her. Meredith died."

Derek was distraught , words could not describe how much it hurt. "How?"

"Her heart, we think. She seemed fine half an hour earlier when Chris checked on her, she was asleep in her bed, but by the time we found her... she was gone. I doubt she would have even known what was happening. We are all so sorry."

* * *

Derek was absolutely devastated by the news as you can imagine, after he recovered from the initial shock, Allison took him through to Meredith's room, where her body still lay in her bed.

The nurses had obviously made an effort to clean her up for Derek, her thinned hair was brushed back, and a blanket covered her body to her shoulders, she looked as though she was sleeping, except she wasn't, she was dead.

* * *

By that point all of the other patients had been woken by the commotion, and as Derek had been led through the hallway, all eyes had been on him, many of the patients, especially the ones Meredith had been close to were in tears, none more so than Casey, who had been hysterical, the nurses had been forced to sedate her, and she was now back in bed in her room beside Meredith's.

* * *

Upon seeing his wife, Derek could only sit in the chair that had been purposely placed beside Meredith's bed, and hold her hand. It was not until hours later that he would leave, and no one was rushing him.

* * *

There was so much to organise, as Derek discovered after he had left the centre, but Derek felt that his first port of call, before he began to arrange the funeral and such, was to the hospital to inform everyone there, not just her friends, but everyone, he felt that her death, as she had been well known and liked, should be known of and felt by the everyone, and they should hear it from him.

Derek's assistant, Virginia called the entire surgical staff to the hospital auditorium, Meredith's friends to the back room of the auditorium, where Derek had agreed to meet them.

They had already been prepared that the news was bad, but that didn't stop the steer shock and horror they felt when Derek broke the news.

Owen had been standing just behind Christina, and when Christina heard the news of her best friend's death, she actually screamed, and Owen had taken her in his arms, and he had gently taken her out of the room.

Izzie's response was much the same, but she hadn't screamed, Alex, who was crying nearly as hard as his wife, also guided her away.

Even Miranda Bailey had been floored by the news, quite literally, she had broken into tears, and collapsed to the floor, crying.

And Lexie, well maybe it was better that she wasn't working that day. There would be time to tell her later, Derek felt that it would be better to wait, honestly he didn't think that he could handle the task of telling Meredith's family on top of everything, not today.

* * *

Mark had already spoken briefly to the assembled medical and nursing staffs, who were packed into the auditorium, laid the foundation work for Derek to speak.

And when Derek went out to the podium, he didn't make any kind of speech or such, he didn't have anything left, he only said, "Dr Meredith Grey, my wife and your head of neurosurgery died this morning after a long struggle with anorexia."

That was enough.

* * *

Meredith's death was indeed felt throughout the hospital, and for her to have died of a condition that no one had known about for months, a condition that many were wishing they would've seen, questioning whether she could have been saved.

In truth no one could have saved Meredith's life, she was the one in ten anorexics who don't survive, who can't recover from the life threatening mental illness.

* * *

Meredith's funeral was held at the same church that Izzie and Alex had been married in, four days later. Her cause of death had been confirmed as having been a sudden cardiac failure, in combination caused by her heart's deterioration caused by the anorexia and her damaging behaviours.

The church was more than half filled with her friends, members of the Seattle Grace Hospital and Timbertop Centre staffs, and members of Meredith's rarely seen extended family, who flew in from everywhere to attend, just because Ellis hadn't been inclined to have much to do with family didn't impact whatsoever on their family love her.

The service had been led by the priest from the church, with eulogies given by Christina, Mark, who gave the eulogy Derek had written, as Derek just couldn't bring himself to, and Meredith's father, Thatcher, who spoke alongside his youngest daughter, Lexie.

It was probably for the best that they had chosen a closed casket service, Meredith's body looked almost childlike, she was so small, her face had been nearly unrecognisable she had lost all fat and therefore shape in her face, it, like the rest of her body was nothing but skin and bones.

After the service, Meredith was laid to rest in a cemetery outside of the city.

* * *

For Meredith, every day had been a struggle, and part of her had wanted to die, some days, truthfully, most days life was more than Meredith could bear. It wasn't just about the food, the eating disorder was for her a coping mechanism, used when her life felt out of control, when she was stressed, or upset, sometimes even when she was happy, starting way back when she was twelve, it was easier to retreat, to shield herself from the world by focusing everything on her anorexia, by giving in to everything it promised, ignoring how much damage it did, to everything and everyone.

* * *

And for Derek, as hard as it had been to cope while Meredith was ill, living without her, it hurt so badly sometimes he couldn't even breathe. Even years later, Meredith's death would cause him nearly unbearable pain.

Derek still lived in the home he had shared with Meredith, he went to work every day, but he just wasn't the same man he had been before.

Derek couldn't just forget that the love of his life, his soul mate had died. Maybe if he had seen what was happening earlier, maybe he could have helped her, maybe he could have saved her life.

But he couldn't change that now.

* * *

_**The End**_


End file.
